WHY ORTONA?Who Decided To Fight Through The Streets?Modern armies do not customarily fight in built up areas. They can be death traps in which defending troops may be bottled up, or an offensive dissipated in rubble filled streets.By the time two battalions of Canadian infantry moved towards the outskirts of Ortona on December 20 no one seriously expected the Germans to try and hold the town. It was thought that at most there would be light opposition, easily brushed aside. Instead, the Fallschirmjäger quickly established they meant to hold the town.Once the forward infantry of The Loyal Edmonton Regiment and The Seaforth Highlanders encountered strong enemy resistance, a decision was made to push forward, to attack into the deadly, defended streets.In his memoirs, written shortly before his death in 1985, Major General Chris Vokes was silent about the decision to take the fight into the streets and buildings of Ortona.No study of the battle has brought out how, why, or by whom it was decided the attacking Canadians would fight through the town rather than try to bypass it and picket the German troops.Modern armies operate under a pyramid of authority, in which operations at the bottom level can be directed from orders imposed anywhere along the chain of command. At Ortona that chain went from Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister commanding 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade back to Major General Chris Vokes commanding 1st Canadian Infantry Division, then to Lieutenant General Charles Allfrey commanding British V Corps, then finally reached General Bernard Montgomery commanding British Eighth Army.Perhaps it is best not to be overly judgmental. As Herman Melville wrote in Billy Budd:"Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it."